November has come to a close and with it NaNoWriMoers around the world stop their fingers over their keyboards and breath a sigh. It’s been twenty days since I last wrote a blog and in that time I turned thirty, had a week of celebrations with my brother, and completed NaNoWriMo.
My birthday was predictably fun, full of love, and over in a flash. The lead up to the event, especially a landmark one such as this that completes not just another year but another decade, was slow but unstoppable. My excitement rose by the slightest margin incrementally with each passing day and was doubled not only by the thought of birthday fun but also by once again being visited by Brother Jonathan. It’s weird and more than a little sad that I now get “visited” by my brother who since birth, and arguably even before that being twins and all, has been relatively accessible to me pretty much whenever I wanted. However, he now lives in London and half, if not more, of his life also resides in Austria. The day was over quickly being full of activities, friends, and family; and even Jonathan’s trip went by all too fast as he really only had five full days in the country. We made the most of them. Jonathan is now back ensconced in his life on the other side of the globe and unfortunately, life being what it is, it’s unlikely that we’ll see each other until we’re both thirty one.
On to NaNoWriMo. It’s been a hell of a ride. I detailed some of my thoughts on the experience in that last post and so will attempt to avoid repeating myself and instead focus on the things I noticed in the second half of the challenge. Firstly, that it’s not the worst idea to write myself into a corner. The first twenty to twenty five thousand words I wrote were largely exploratory and world building which meant that the actual plot got fairly neglected. I was setting things up but not really pushing them forward as I was too caught up telling myself the ins and outs of my world and characters; a fairly easy thing to do since I had done minimal outlining before the month and had a word count to reach each day. Aware of this I purposely sought to push the plot forward after reaching the halfway mark of the fifty thousand word deadline. The only problem was I didn’t really know where my plot was going. I had a hazy idea of an ending somewhere in the future but all the bits inbetween, and all the mysteries I had been setting up, needed answers and I didn’t have them. I pushed on regardless until I wrote myself as far into a corner as possible, literally to the point where one character was asking another character for an explanation that I didn’t have. I found out that at that point something miraculous happens. I wrote something down. The character responded with an idea that came from some desperate and last minute part of my brain and I then built upon that. Even more amazing, the idea wasn’t half bad. This happened a number of more times as the days of November passed by and always with the same result. I’d hit a wall, brain would kick in with an answer from nowhere, and I was off and running again. It was really exciting because while I knew that I would scrap most of the words I was writing at the end of the month, as it was fairly terrible writing, I wouldn’t scrap the ideas. With each new gem of an idea I was once step closer to a second draft that actually had some substance.
I hit the end word target, fifty thousand words, two days before my birthday. In the week leading up to my birthday, with these fresh ideas popping up, I got into a groove and my daily word count jumped from around two and a half thousand per day to around five thousand, which meant I was barrelling towards that fifty thousand goal even faster than I thought I would. I had a plan to slow down and purposely write that fifty thousandth word on the day I turned thirty, November 20th. Except on the 18th I got another fresh idea and decided to write it out, thinking I would still be a few hundred words away from the target. When I was done I checked the word count and found that I had instead passed the illustrious goal. It was odd. I had stumbled across the finish line almost by accident, without noticing, and without any fanfare. After the shock passed elation kicked in and I was too happy to care that I had ruined my own plan. It turned out to be a blessing because rather than get more writing done in my week off with Jonathan I got less, almost none to be exact. This was due to the combination of being blessedly busy as well as getting sick, which was undoubtedly the worst present I got this year. I finally rallied again after a few days of rest and I finished out the month yesterday with somewhere just over sixty one thousand words and a self filled out certificate proclaiming I was a winner of NaNoWriMo.
The story isn’t finished but I realised pretty early on that it wouldn’t be by the end of the month. That’s okay, it was getting to the point where I had actually found my story and so all the early muddling about was distracting me from writing good stuff for the finish. My plan is to leave it for the next month then starting January 1st reread what I’ve written and scrap it for parts. I’ll take all the good story points, characters, and world elements that I liked and use them to start a detailed outline for draft two; ditching all the other superfluous stuff. Once that’s done and I have a pretty good idea of the whole arc of my story then my plan is to open a fresh document and start writing again from page one.
I was planning on including in this blog all the things I’ve learnt from NaNoWriMo but seeing how I’ve gone on a bit already I might save that for tomorrow. Instead I’ll leave you with this.
http://community.sparknotes.com/2016/11/30/did-nanowrimo-slay-you-read-this
It’s an very well written article by Sara Benincasa on the overall point of completing NaNoWriMo, and how all writers out there should be proud even if NaNoWriMo got the best of them.
For now me and my writing buddies, Sean, Gabe, Tom, and Alyce, who also successfully slayed NaNoWriMo this month and also supported, encouraged, and provided competition for me, are going to go get drunk.
Remember, there’s nothing new in this world, which means anything you create has been done before. Rejoice in this fact because it means there are others like you out there.
Talk soon
Damian
Damian Robb 